by Piers Platt
One evening we practiced night firing – both shooting with our barrel-mounted flashlights to illuminate the target, and shooting with night vision goggles on. Night firing is far more difficult than normal daytime shooting, but on this particular night, the weather upped the ante by whipping a sustained sand-storm through the area. It was nasty, to say the least: even with goggles and a scarf, the sand worked its way into our throats and eyes, stinging and scratching incessantly, and reducing visibility in the dark to nearly nothing. But one day soon we might need to fight in these conditions, so we pressed on. The M4 rifle is a reliable weapon when cleaned and lightly oiled, but it does not function smoothly with sand in its guts, as we soon discovered. There was no way to keep the sand out, however, so by the end of the night, we were all experts in fixing malfunctions on our weapons, quickly and thoroughly, and by blind feel alone. Such training does wonders for the confidence level of soldiers.
Not only was the training realistic and demanding, it was a hell of a lot of fun, because the instructors made it so. They abolished all of the lock-step rules and procedures which make regular Army shooting such a chore, and just got down to the business of laying steel downrange. One of our soldiers was having trouble getting his sight zeroed in, his rounds landing everywhere on his target except the center-of-mass ring. As the rest of us finished up, we could tell he was nearing the limit of his patience.
“Hold on,” Bob said, taking his rifle, “Let me check it.”
He assumed an odd, cross-legged seated stance I had never before seen, cradled the rifle to his chest, and blew off ten rounds in a few seconds flat. All ten shots were tightly clustered in the target’s “head.”
“Nope, she’s shooting straight,” Bob observed mildly. “We just gotta get it adjusted to where you’re aiming.”
He handed the weapon back, walked down the range, and knelt down two feet to the right of the target.
“Okay,” he yelled. “Go ahead. Shoot, and I’ll walk you in.”
To the rest of us, brought up on ranges where it was a cardinal sin for anyone to walk in front of the shooting line while there were loaded weapons anywhere in the vicinity, this was about the coolest, ballsiest thing ever. With more than a little trepidation, the trooper got back into the firing position and hesitantly fired off three rounds into the target.
“Okay, adjust your sight down two notches.”
He did, and fired three more rounds into the paper next to Bob. Bob glanced at the paper again, and adjusted him left one notch. All three rounds landed in the bulls-eye. We nicknamed Bob “Crazy Motherfucker” for the rest of our time there, though no one had the guts to call him that to his face.
* * *
After several more weeks in Kuwait, our HETs (Heavy Equipment Transporters) arrived for the journey up to our area of operations north of Baghdad. HETs are massive armored Mack trucks with a trailer that can carry any Army vehicle, including our tanks. They help save both fuel (since an M1 Abrams burns about a gallon of fuel every mile) and wear and tear on the tanks, which require an ungodly amount of maintenance to keep them operational. I’m sure there’s an official study out there somewhere about how many man-hours it takes to keep a tank up and running, but I would guess it’s almost a one-to-one ratio of operational time to maintenance time.
We would be riding in our vehicles, on top of the HETs, and though our tanks would be chained down, turrets secured and engines off, we had every intention of firing them up and busting those chains the moment we came into enemy contact. With our entry into Iraq itself imminent, everyone’s nerves were frayed – tempers were shorter, smiles were tighter, and there was a lot of loud back-slapping and machismo to cover our anxiety. We had become acclimatized to the desert, to a certain degree – to the heat and dust, and the bitterly cold nights – but the novelty of Kuwait had worn off. We were eager to go north, to start getting our tour over with, but I for one felt a growing knot in my belly, and sleep came only sporadically for the last few nights.
On the final morning in Kuwait we took a platoon picture in the sand of the motor pool, some mugging for the camera, others sober and unsmiling. I gave one final safety brief, stressing the importance of vigilance at all times, and what the medical evacuation plan was. I’m not religious, or at least, not in a conventional way, but as I watched my men head off to their tanks, I prayed silently that we would all be back there in 12 months’ time, together and in one piece. Then I climbed up into my turret, pulled my helmet on, and placed my rifle beside me.
Sergeant First Class Nicholls started us off on the right foot. On a dare, as we rolled out in a mass of dust and creaking axles, he was standing on the turret of his tank, which is known as “turret-surfing.” Turret-surfing is sternly prohibited for safety reasons, but Nicholls was upping the ante by keeping his balance while also performing the “monkey-fucker.” The monkey-fucker is a diabolically painful lower body physical exercise which involves standing with legs shoulder-width apart, reaching through your legs to grab hold of the back of your ankles, and then rapidly thrusting your butt up and down in a lewd squatting motion. It is traditionally accompanied with shouts of “fuck that monkey!” and ape-like screeching sounds.
The rest of the ride through Kuwait was without incident – we saw some camels, a few Bedouin, sand, sand and more sand, and finally pulled into a small encampment just south of the Iraqi border, where we would camp the night. Incredibly, they had a Pizza Hut® there, which we all took full advantage of, knowing our food quality was about to take a sharp down-turn.
We entered Iraq just after dawn on the second day of our convoy north. There was no customs house or border gate, not even a sign (“Welcome to Iraq, the Cradle of Civilization!”), only a series of tall earthen berms running perpendicular to the highway in either direction, relics of the Gulf War. I wasn’t even sure we had crossed into Iraq until Staff Sergeant Kean (who had been a tank driver back in 1991 on Schwarzkopf’s famous “Hail Mary” flanking maneuver) called up over the radio:
“I never wanted to come back to this fucking place.”
I locked and loaded my rifle and the .50 cal machine gun, then ducked my head inside to ensure that Sergeant Cleary was loading his own machine gun in the gunner’s hole. There were a few comments over the radio about “staying sharp” and things along those lines, but I refrained from sending them along to my platoon, figuring that the majority of us were in a combat zone for the first time, and would need no such reminders. I felt a rush of fear tinged with excitement myself, though the lack of fanfare at the border and the miles of empty desert stretching in each direction made it hard to get too worked up.
The day plodded on, and eventually we began to see signs of life – green patches in the desert, palm trees, scattered mud buildings, dogs, goats, and children. They ran, barefoot, along the side of road as we thundered past, some smiling and waving, others somberly making odd gestures which we later learned was their way of begging for food. We were too new to throw them anything, not knowing what rules we might be breaking, what obscure code of guerrilla warfare might be violated. Some troopers waved back, others ignored them. We all scanned the sides of the road endlessly, sweeping our eyes over lumps and bumps, trash and debris, anything that could conceal an improvised explosive device (IED). They had given us a brief class in Kuwait on some of the lessons learned about IEDs in Iraq, which, at the time, were a relatively recent addition to the insurgent arsenal. A month or so before our arrival, the insurgents had started “daisy-chaining” the bombs: linking multiple bombs in large strands to hit several vehicles at once. The instructors also made it clear to us that any vehicle – even the vaunted M1 Abrams tank – could be destroyed by an IED. It wasn’t much of a protective strategy, but they counseled us to be vigilant, to project to all observers an air of hair-trigger readiness, and to move fast, no matter what. Our HETs were certainly hauling ass, pushing 60 mph on the dusty highway.
Mid-way through the first afternoon we had our first intro
duction to the brutally low value of life in Iraq. Inexplicably, several trucks ahead of me, an Iraqi man decided he needed to cross the road. He was watching our trucks closely as we barreled along, but as he was timing his dash across, an Iraqi truck shot out of the thick dust going in the opposite direction, and slammed directly into the man, tossing him like a rag doll. There was already a large slick of crimson blood in the road in the second or two it took my truck to roll past the accident. The Iraqi truck that had hit him didn’t even slow down. We were shocked, and were discussing calling a halt over the radio, but one of our medics had gotten a good look at the man as he passed, and assured us there was nothing he could do.
Later that afternoon, we had our first experience with an IED traffic jam – one had been discovered a mile or so ahead of us, so we were halted at a safe distance while the local unit called in EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal – the bomb squad). After half an hour, we heard a blast, saw the column of smoke rising, and then simply started driving again. I hoped every future encounter would be so easy.
The Army doesn’t stop convoys for bathroom breaks, so everyone was urinating in empty water bottles on the vehicles. Midway through the first day, Vince Taylor and his gunner were standing in the hatches of their Bradley Fighting Vehicle when they felt what they thought was a drizzle of rain. They looked up: blue sky, not a hint of cloud. Puzzled, they began searching for the source of the moisture. Then they saw the soldier in the passenger seat of their HET emptying a bottle of piss out his window. Driving at 60 mph, the spray from the bottle was blowing right back in their faces. While his gunner retched over the side of the Bradley, Vince gave the man an earful over the radio before ducking down into his turret to clean himself off with baby wipes as best as he could.
On the third day we traversed Baghdad. The terrain had gradually shifted during the morning, as we left the great southern deserts behind and emerged into the region supported by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Sand had given way to thick scrub grass and bushes, and stands of palm trees began to appear as well. On either side of the highway, somewhat concealed amongst the trees, we saw more and more destroyed Iraqi vehicles, though from which war we did not know. We even saw a Russian-made T-72 tank that had been flipped upside down onto its turret – I wondered what cataclysmic weapon had caused such a result.
We were all excited to see Baghdad, if only for a change of pace from the featureless desert of the day before, though we didn’t pass anything recognizable as a landmark in the city. Instead, Baghdad revealed itself to be a slum city stretching endlessly in every direction – there were empty lots piled high with trash right next to people’s houses, and it looked as if someone had decided to throw up some ramshackle cement buildings in the midst of a dump. The highway was clogged with an enormous amount of rusty, secondhand cars, and the complete lack of traffic signals meant that the driving conditions were pure chaos.
* * *
Our final destination was a Forward Operating Base (FOB) called FOB Mackenzie, a bombed-out Iraqi air base in the desert east of Samarra. The final road march to Mackenzie was both hectic and nerve-wracking. We crossed the Tigris over a pair of tall bridges and entered the southern part of the town of Ad Duluiyah. The town was thick with low-slung power lines, some of which sparked brightly when our vehicle antennas hit them. Still others were low enough that we had to duck down in our turrets to avoid them. Later, we learned that a Bradley commander had been killed by just such a wire a few months before, electrocuted in his hatch when he failed to see the power line ahead of him. The buildings were tight along the road, balconies and rooftops perched just above us on either side, perfect for a would-be attacker, and between ducking under wires and trying to cover every rooftop I could see with my rifle, I worked up quite a sweat. At last we were through the far side of the town, and the HETs picked up steam for the final few miles to the front gate.
Forward Operating Base Mackenzie was several miles north of town, but close enough to be within insurgent mortar range, happily. Despite being only a few miles away from the Tigris, it was far enough north to be outside the green belt of vegetation that hugs the river’s banks. A roughly rectangular patch of sand and cement runways about two miles square, the FOB was surrounded by an earthen berm topped with razor wire, and looked out into completely empty desert in all directions. About ten or fifteen large cement bunkers were peppered around the installation, and huge domed aircraft hangars marked the ends of each runway, each sporting a massive hole from U.S. Air Force precision munitions. The whole place was so dusty and depressing, I half-expected a Jawa sandcrawler to appear over the berm.
At Mackenzie we met up with the units from 4th Infantry Division that we were meant to relieve, who were charged with getting us familiar with the area of operations before they went home. After a few briefings from their outgoing officers, I was told to ride with a reconnaissance platoon to see how they ran patrols. One of the things I had told my fiancée to try to console her over my upcoming deployment was that I would be going to battle in an M1 Abrams tank, the most well-protected vehicle in existence. So of course, my first patrol in Iraq turned out to be in a Humvee with fiberglass sides and the doors removed. It looked like it might be a short tour after all.
I got over my fears quickly, and even enjoyed the feel of the cool dusk breeze coming through the doorframe, and the excitement of speeding along the highway without doors. Our mission was to conduct reconnaissance of a large area south of the Jabal Hamrin ridge, a towering razorback of stone running east and south toward the Iranian border, which marked the northern boundary of the Squadron’s territory. Lately, insurgents had figured out an innovative way to fire Russian SA-8 anti-aircraft missiles from this area towards our Division Headquarters, located in Saddam’s old Tikrit palace complex. An Air Force jet the previous night had spotted some suspicious Bedouin tents in the area and requested a ground reconnaissance to check them out.
It meant covering a lot of ground, all of which was largely uninhabited desert or sparse grasslands. We saw nothing other than grass and dirt for several hours, until we crested a small rise just after midnight and the Jabal Hamrin ridgeline came into view in the moonlit distance. It was a jagged, rocky spine, looking oddly out of place in the desert. On the near side of the ridge there was an oil refinery, which spouted a tongue of flame from one of its smokestacks. The flame was bright enough, even from several miles off, to light the surrounding area with a campfire-like glow. Several hundred yards in front of us was the cluster of cramped Bedouin tents the jet had spotted.
The reconnaissance Lieutenant laughed: “Yeah, way to go, Air Force.”
“What?” I asked.
“Have you ever seen an SA-8?”
“No,” I admitted.
He smiled. “It’s over 10 feet long. It wouldn’t even fit in one of those tents. The Bedouin don’t give a shit about us, anyway – they’re far more interested in their goats. Ah, fuck it – let’s go check it out.”
We rolled down to the tents and the platoon climbed lazily out of the Humvees, the vehicles arranged in a loose circle around the tents for security. The Bedouins had heard us coming, of course – their dogs had given them plenty of warning. A small man greeted us outside the largest tent, smiling toothlessly. The platoon leader explained his intentions through charades while a couple of his soldiers ambled into the tent, weapons slung, showing no anxiety or concern whatsoever. They popped out a minute later, and an NCO walked up to the two of us and the Iraqi.
“Nothing, sir – guy’s got an ancient bolt-action rifle, but that’s it.”
We climbed back into the Humvees and headed back to the FOB.
Hell, I thought. This war stuff is easy.
* * *
I would soon get to know that area very well. Soon after our 4th Infantry Division predecessors headed home and left us in charge, we received our first mission as a troop: we would conduct a thorough reconnaissance of the area south of that same Jabal Hamrin ridge – gat
her intelligence, basically, about what was up there, who lived there, whether they were friendly, neutral, or hostile, etc. The scouts would be responsible for covering the most ground, while the tanks would set up a series of observation posts watching the roads, and traffic control points (checkpoints or roadblocks that allow soldiers to search vehicles) to ensure no insurgents were moving weapons into or out of the area.
That might have been an important mission in your normal bustling Iraqi town, but we were conducting it in Iraq’s equivalent of Nebraska: 130 cavalrymen in the world’s most advanced and lethal vehicles patrolling rolling grasslands populated by perhaps 20 goat farmers. We soon realized our mission was just a training exercise for our new commanding officer, who had taken command after we had completed all of our critical training in Germany, following the Army’s usual sound staffing logic.
We spent five days out there letting our commander “take off the training wheels,” and our biggest accomplishment was finding what can only be described as an ammunition junk heap: ancient artillery rounds rusting in the heat, scattered willy-nilly over a square mile. We had no idea how it got there (“You want me to just dump all these rounds in the middle of a field?” “Yes, but not in one big pile – put them all over the place.”), but one of the other platoons would later spend several months guarding that ammo dump, to their chagrin and eternal boredom.
After hours of nervous anticipation, worrying about my qualities as a leader and my ability to make decisions under fire, I was finally faced with leading my first combat mission, on my own. I spent hours planning it, and agonizing over contingency plans, risk assessments, and the like. Then we rehearsed every stage of the operation several times. At last, we rolled out and established our checkpoint … on a one-lane road, with miles of grass and not a single car in sight. And then we waited.
